Sunday, February 1, 2009

Super Bowl Sunday. A terrible football game will be taking place at about 6:38 PM tonight. The guy who did "The Wrestler" song is going to be doing the halftime show. This game should be an awful rerun of the 2006 Super Bowl - The Steelers vs. The Seahawks (known to my friends and I as the bad Joo Joo Super Bowl but that is another story). This time we have another overachieving bird from the beautiful NFC West division taking on a predatory Steelers team that only rises to the occasion when the competition in the AFC is down a notch. Get your Roethlisburgers ready, this one will make you puke.

Thank God, then, that Sunday morning featured another classic Nadal v. Federer match in tennis. This one from the Australian Open. I hated tennis growing up. My family is part Greek so of course I loved watching Pete Sampras with his strange Grecian charms, five o'clock shadow and white sneakers. The rest of it though was for the Cardinals. My great uncle used to watch tennis all the time at family gatherings and make everyone watch it - this frustrated me to no end when there was a cartoon on or usually a better sporting event. So it comes as a shocker that I am now becoming a tennis fan. This is solely because of Nadal v. Federer. There are only a few times in sports when a rivalry can be a truly riveting event, half the time what people qualify as rivalries in sports are not even true rivalries. This has been. Their games compliment each other quite well and Nadal's unintentional comedy is off the chart. The Wimbledon final from last summer was the best match of all time and this morning's final was certainly up there. The whole match had you on the edge of your seat. However, this rivalry is coming close to one-sided unless Federer starts picking up some big wins. Nadal is truly impressive.

Anyway, that is it for the sports rant. Enjoy the game today if you can and drink 100 beers for me.

Below is my newest poem.

Whither America?

Whither America? The sound of the gas-stoveAnd she drank peppermint tea with honeyTalking about snow shoeing in the CatskillsWhere once Rip Van Washington slept in dust.

There the wood cabins lie in the clearingsWhere your friends set foot on the pathsThey had thrust themselves further on,The paths the dogs had laid in earnest,The tracks we’d all imagined in the great shadowOf our Brooklyns and our Manhattans and ChicagosThe places we could dunk our heads under cold streams.

Whither America? The key dropped from an open windowShe pulled you close by the geranium potWearing a grey skirt ruffled by the kneesWith your arms on her back and two feet in the air.

Around the corner the full moon is over Christmas lights,The neon piles of ice melt in the moist winterOf Civil War beards and thick maroon scarvesWhere boys and girls in slim black pants smileBecause they’ve known the snow entrenched seasonThat the picture books showed them in class –The St. Petersburg and Moscow furies of their musicAnd the frozen Valley Forge December memoriesWith raw red feet and long tattered coats.

Wither America? The reel of a spinning bicycle spoke,She and her girlfriend walk dogs in the VillageWhere Gaslight photos make their hair rise up in cotton candy tuftsAnd all they want to do is shop for a stroller or crib.

Art galleries open up the front page of the daily news andWhile most of their friends freelance or have no jobs,The two women sit by their bicycles in the duskWatching the sun on the piers and along the narrow waterlineLetting New Jersey call out in pain to Oakland on the last page,But the snowstorm is going to come in on WednesdayThe snowstorm is going to come in and make everything silent –No jobs, no cribs or strollers, just white and the hair of the dog.

Whither America? The feel of a statue at summer’s high noon.The courtyard butterflies won’t stop for the green berriesNeither will the smokers in the sunroom watching soap operas -The woman in the straw-hat will, she’ll pick them all.

When you think of death all day your cheese platters won’t take,The wood bases and berries won’t taste as sweetTheir flavor won’t stand above the warehouse walkwaysWhen the girlfriend holds you both arm in arm in happinessKnowing she did good hosting dinner for different groups –Conversation over candles and Argentinean fillets.Digestion is the afterlife of friendship and drunkennessSo make the best of all the secondhand smoke and sexThat juts out of the music, the mercury and moustaches.

Whither America? The hair curls in the shower drainLetting the water fill the tub at the end of a long springWith lobsters and purple lighthouse flowers and beestings,Things that won’t leave you alone at the onset of February.

The underwear underneath the window belonged to herNavy and filled with longing like anything left behindHe threw them out on the way to work in April’s reliefAnd she always hated strip malls with their Iowa parking lotsTheir stained Stop and Shop façades and neonsShe could learn that desolation means the same thingIn the Texas panhandle as it does in the rice marshes of China,Further around to the cracked olive hills of SpainSo too does love in this life or one from two times ago.But they both moved away wearing different sunglassesAnd we never received a postcard from either of them.

Whither America? The press of a hug before midnightThe wreaths are falling from the white doorframesBeer bottles threaten to break the table and your eyesWhile you try to let the embraces leave in single file.

What makes blonde hair and stories of boyfriendsMake you feel like a father with your burnt coffee mug?No matter how many days you try to sleep in you will neverFigure out that mysterious love that stabs you at the stoplightThe one that balloons you up for some mysterious reasonThe one that deflates you as the laughs come so easy andFade gently out the door leaving you sitting Indian style on the carpetNot sad but desirous of a question that has no wordsMade up of apples, baby powder, arousal, the whispersOn a back deck or light snow falling on a quiet lane.So keep walking and let the secret follow you along.

Whither America? The mother and child reunionThe red hat placed against the broad coffin’s sheen upholstery,Make-ups, scarves and handbags sitting against chair legsWhile the animal crying only comes at the very beginning and end.

Salt the roads because tonight the mist turns into black iceThe car washes will do a brisk business this weekend to the duskWith mothers driving in and out with their kids to let their carsPass under the scrubbers as if it were an amusement ride.Your mother can foresee the emptiness next to the fireplaceBut you can tell her it isn’t so, if she knows more than you about loveYou have the leg up for studying the movement of death,Though you can’t let things die, you know how deathMarries love – the gaze toward the stars or snow gently falling.The ottoman sits squat on the paneled wooden floorAnd you can love your mother with all of your heartBut she feels things you never will, though you can tryYour soul will never move away from the ceremony -The marriage of love and death in the grocery line.

Whither America? The sound of the gas-stove andThe pant of rain on the road from the basement window.I want to put the satchel to my shoulder one more timeTo let all of these stories pass from my chest like bloodInching in the rifts made by my boots with every smileAnd kiss and hug that have come across my path.The view from the Seine will never make me forgetThose lean-tos you all built with whiskey in your packsThe friendly smile on the underground train platform,Bus glass covering your heads while you shivered in NovemberI won’t let the blood get away from me; I’ll let it go.Heartache shouldn’t be buried with the purple knit afghanIt stays with death and love - the marriage in the middle of the day -The mother and child reunion at the nearest exit of the highwayMe standing by the fireplace, bleeding in the light.